The news as of the first coffee this morning, and the music is the south end of First Coffee's collection. Only the truly finicky among us have an absolute order system for arranging CDs on the shelf -- alphabetically by artist, then chronologically within artist, and yes we do look up release dates we don't know -- so starting from the other end, we've selected Warren Zevon's Excitable Boy, Neil Young's Live Rust and Dwight Yoakam's Guitars, Cadillacs, Etc. for our listening pleasure:

Princeton Softech, a vendor of enterprise data management, has announced that Thiess, an Australian engineering and construction companies, has selected Princeton Softech Optim JD Edwards EnterpriseOne to improve the management of enterprise application data.

Controlling ongoing General Ledger data growth in its JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Financial Management applications is a "top priority," according to Thiess officials.

Optim captures and archives complete business objects, such as ledgers, and offers application-independent access to standalone archives, so companies can respond quickly and accurately to audit and discovery requests.

Paul Winn, chairman, CEO and president of Princeton Softech, said Optim is for companies who want a consistent, long-term approach to enterprise data management.

While retaining historical data is necessary for compliance, retaining large volumes of data for extended periods of time can strain IT resources. Optim is designed to help companies segregate current from historical data and store the historical data in a secure archive.

Established in 1933, Thiess is one of Australia and Asia's largest construction, mining and services companies. It's currently working on projects throughout Australia, the near Pacific and South East Asia.

Today's Holiday: Recreation Day, in Northern Tasmania. We're not sure what this holiday entails (translation: Five minutes of lazy Googling didn't turn up anything) but we sure like the name.

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Recommind, an enterprise search and categorization vendor, has announced MindServer Expertise, an application for its MindServer 4.2 enterprise information access platform.

MindServer Expertise is described by company officials as "a comprehensive directory search tool" combining standard directory content with individual work product, providing "real-time access to the tacit knowledge of an organization."

MindServer is designed to transform high volumes of discrete files, documents, and messages contained in enterprise management systems, HR, time and billing systems, CRM and contact management systems into manageable information relevant to a user's specific purpose.

The application helps consulting and professional services organizations identify individuals within the firm who have unique expertise or specialized knowledge, so that they can find and collaborate with those individuals on project work, present the full value of the firm's knowledge in new business pitches, and match the best resources to client engagements.

"The competitive advantage of a large professional services organization lies in its deep bench and extensive intellectual assets, but as those resources operate around the world and across many different disciplines, it can be difficult to identify exactly who knows what," noted Bob Tennant, CEO of Recommind and a man who sounds like he speaks from personal experience.

The way MindServer Expertise is supposed to work is to collect information and identify expert individuals with "no additional work on the part of the organization's employees," Tennant says.

Expertise is determined by the work that has been produced, instead of static manual profiles which are rarely updated and quickly out of date. Using a centralized search application, the consultant or project manager can view profiles of people relevant to their search terms, as well as links to documents and projects related to that person and the search concept. Searches can be refined through smart filtering fields, such as client, industry, or office, and firms can quickly cross-reference relevant documents, projects, and experts related to a similar topic.

"Expertise location, weaving together diverse content applications to allow knowledge workers to share and receive expertise they need -- has great promise in sectors like law, enterprise software, professional services, securities research, and healthcare," said Forrester Research analyst Matt Brown in a 2006 report titled "Expertise Location: Your Next Frontier."

Smart companies, Brown said, realize expertise location is "not about a single software product. It starts with identifying critical knowledge gathering patterns -- and mapping a fabric of solutions directly to those business needs."

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FTS, an Israeli company trying to own the "Business Control Layer" buzzword, in partnership with Cisco Systems and analysts Yankee Group will demonstrate "how service providers can improve revenues and increase customer satisfaction using the Business Control Layer" in Hamburg and London next week.

The free road show is open to all Service Providers at the Kaffeeborse in Hamburg on 15th November and the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, London on 16th November.

During the seminar, Service Providers can learn how Telenet used FTS's Leap Business Control Engine and Cisco's SCE to achieve what company officials characterize as "higher revenues, a 40 percent reduction in customer service calls, reduction in churn and an increase in overall customer satisfaction. Attendees can also learn how they can create IMS-like capabilities using their current network infrastructure.

Business Control Layer is a software layer in the providers' infrastructure residing between the network/OSS and the BSS. It lets operators dynamically adapt network or service behavior in response to customer interaction "resulting," so the sales pitch goes, "in higher revenue and customer satisfaction."

This is supposed to work by capturing events in real-time and responding in real time based on a preconfigured set of business policies or actions, such as sending the subscriber a message, changing service QoS, provisioning, balance management or rating to name a few.

The seminar will feature presentations in both London and Hamburg, between 8.30 a.m. and 12.45 p.m. including a complementary lunch. Contact Hamburg_event@fts-soft.com for the Hamburg event or London_event@fts-soft.com for the London event, no later than November 13th.